No Mourning for Electro

Even on the jumbo or Texas-sized map of Texas, the cattle and oil town of Electra (pop. 7,500) is hardly bigger than a fly's off-hind footprint. But to its mayor, a hulking, oil-rich, ex-circus roustabout named T. Leo Moore, Electra is the pearl-handled, goldplated, diamond-studded axle of the universe. When the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway threatened to have its streamlined Texas Zephyr blow through Electra without stopping, Mayor Moore began to paw dirt.

He paid no attention to the railroad's complaint that the town only gave it $15 worth of passenger business a month. "We don't want to be just another little place like Punkin Center or Bug Scuffle," he cried, and called the city commission into special session. The result: an ordinance which would have forced trains to crawl through town at no more than 15 m.p.h., ring their bells (but not blow their whistles), with a stop for "sanitary inspections" whenever the mayor ordered it.

The railroad decided to hold off for a while. But a fortnight ago it announced a final decision: after May 1 the Zephyr would no longer stop at Electra.

Last week Mayor Moore was on the warpath again. To protest making Electra a whistle stop for express trains, he had thousands of plastic whistles molded in the shape of locomotives. He made a trip to the state capital at Austin, passed them out to the governor, the legislature (legislators cheered him admiringly and blew their whistles in chorus) and everybody else he met. Then he demanded a special hearing by the Texas Railroad Commission.

He attended wearing his best hand-painted necktie and cowboy boots; after laying aside his cigar and taking off his coat, he spent an hour waving his hamlike hands beneath the noses of railroad lawyers, buttering up the commissioners and discussing the greatness of Texas.

"If the commission goes against us," said Mayor Moore, who is also the city magistrate, "we'll appeal. We'll get an injunction. We'll get everyone in Electra down to the station blowing whistles. We'll get a cowboy singer and have him give them an adenoid solo. We'll put up stoplights at the railroad crossings and make the trains obey them--if they break the law I'll fine 'em."

At week's end, the commission ordered the railroad to go on stopping at Electra until it could examine all evidence and hand down a permanent ruling. Mayor Moore was jubilant--he was certain that no man in his right mind would vote to make the biggest little town in Texas a whistle stop.

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